In the Light of Evolution, II: Biodiversity and Extinction

December 6-8, 2007Irvine, CA

Meeting Overview:Darwin’s experience as a natural historian contributed greatly to his explanation of evolution by natural selection, which stands as one of the grand intellectual achievements in the history of science. The Earth’s exuberant biodiversity is a wellspring for scientific curiosity and discovery about nature’s workings. It is also a source of joy and aesthetic inspiration from poets to philosophers, and provides life-support services to all humanity.

Many scientists have argued that as a consequence of human activities the Earth is now entering the sixth mass extinction event in its four-billion-year history (and the only such event precipitated by a biotic agent). The biodiversity crisis is prompting scientific efforts on many fronts. Systematists are describing biodiversity and reconstructing the Tree of Life. Ecologists are mapping the distributions of biodiversity and global hotspots that merit special conservation attention. Paleontologists are placing the current crisis in temporal context with regard to the Earth’s long geological history, and also to the more recent history of human impacts on biodiversity across timescales ranging from decades to millennia. Educators and concerned scientists are striving to alert policy makers and the public to the biodiversity crisis.

Goals of this colloquium are to synthesize recent discoveries and concepts regarding the global abundance and distribution of biodiversity, and to compare these biodiversity patterns to conditions in the near and distant evolutionary past, as well as to those plausible in the near-term future.